Extracurricular activities can sometimes be difficult to navigate while juggling a social life, school and a plethora of other activities. The truth is though, extracurriculars are an opportunity that should not be put to the side. 

When children participate in extracurricular activities, the benefits are exponential as they have a fantastic influence on your child’s physical health, psychological well being, and social development. Regular participation in after-school activities is a fantastic way to help your children cut down on emotional stress, develop their individual personalities and even enhance their social and academic skills. Extracurriculars also help students with anxiety. 

What are extracurricular activities?

Extracurricular activities are activities that happen outside of class time. Whether they are at lunch, after school or even on evenings and weekends. Your child’s’ school will have lots of options starting in Junior grades through till the end of college. While the extracurricular activities offered to 10-year-olds will differ in some ways from that of extracurricular activities for college they share the same principle. It’s an extra activity that enriches and enhances your child’s development and skills.

When children participate in extracurricular activities, the benefits are exponential as they have a fantastic influence on your child’s physical health, psychological well being, and social development. Regular participation in after-school activities is a fantastic way to help your children cut down on emotional stress, develop their individual personalities and even enhance their social and academic skills.

The Importance of Extracurricular Activities

Stronger Mind

School-based activities such as complex problem solving, and in-depth reading assignments have a natural role to play when it comes to strengthening your child’s mind. Participating in extracurriculars can help your child’s mind build upon that and become even stronger. For example, participating in sports will train students to maintain resilience and patience in the face of difficulty.

Social Skills

These programs are beneficial to far more than your child’s physical well-being. In fact, extracurricular activities are also fun and offer students the opportunity to spend their time with other who possess similar interests to them. When you children participate in after-school activities, they can meet friends from different social groups, allowing them to develop better social skills.

Professional Skills

A classroom alone can not always build all the professional skills that extracurricular activities can. If your children are involved in a leadership club, it can help them to learn the essential delegation and management skills, they will need in the future. Other activities like speech and debate clubs offer an amazing avenue to practice public speaking. Sports-related extracurriculars help to foster strong team building skills. This means that after-school activities can arm students with several skills that their future employers will deem an asset.

Time Management

While it may seem unlikely that adding more for your student to do in a day can help them learn time management, the truth is, it can. A child that finds themselves busy with school work but also required to balance this with other extracurriculars is far more likely to plan out their time, than to just fly by the seat of their pants. Being busy will also cause your child to focus more on completing a task, rather than procrastinating to get it done.

Self Exploration

Participating in extracurricular activities gives your child a chance to learn more about themselves and their individual interests. This helps them to decide what they truly like to do and can help them choose a major in the future. Not only that, but extracurriculars also let your child explore interests they never even knew they had, allowing them to be more diverse in their likes and dislikes.

There are many benefits associated with extracurricular activities, making them extremely important for young children. Not only will after school activities prepare them for their future, but it makes the present a whole lot of fun.

Looking for some great snacks to keep the kids fueled? Try our Slow Cooker Bits and Bites or Chocolate Crunch Peanut Butter Bites delicious and easy and kids will love them!